When I see figs come up in popular media lately, it's always in regards to the unlikely way in which they're pollinated in the wild. While it is very interesting, and may possibly be important to people eating vegan diets, it feels to me like it's missing a big part of the story of figs.
Figs have an incredibly rich history and present - they were apparently one of the first plants cultivated by humans and they have followed peoples' migration across the planet (largely through the magic that is vegetative propagation). I've found the communities that exist to collect, share, and preserve different varieties (there are hundreds, at least) and their stories quite friendly and welcoming. [0][1]
They are also a surprisingly delicious fruit when fresh and ripe but, unlike many other fruits or vegetables, fresh ripe figs are almost always acquired somewhere locally - a tree in a backyard, a local farmer's market, a friend who grew more than they know what to do with. They are very soft when ripe and mostly spoil too quickly to survive modern shipping.
This past summer, a number of fig-related threads in my life came together and I became very interested in figs. I found a number of trees in my neighborhood in Brooklyn which I'm documenting. I've been collecting[2] and propagating cuttings to grow and give to friends, and I'm learning how to grow and care for them in colder climates.
If you haven't tried fresh figs from someplace other than a grocery store or restaurant, I highly suggest looking for them at your local farmer's market some time between late July and early October (in the Northern hemisphere), or get your hands on a tree and try growing some yourself :).
> and may possibly be important to people eating vegan diets
I just wanted to chime in and say that it's not important, at least not for the vast majority of vegans or others following vegan diets.
Most of us are aware that plant foods are not without consequence to animals (e.g. there are likely some ground-up insects in flours). Veganism is more about not willingly/knowingly exploiting or violating the consent of animals, rather than achieving a perfect diet free of even the smallest animal inputs. Even if the latter was the driving force behind a vegan diet, I don't really see the difference between how a fig is pollinated and a tree absorbing nutrients from the decomposing corpses of dead animals buried nearby.
I suppose fig farming may include the farming of wasps to ensure pollination or something, which is perhaps the actual reason behind your comment. Stuff like that is a topic that most vegans don't seem to dive into, just as most don't research to see if their produce was grown with manure instead of synthetic fertilizers. I suppose that if that's the method used for growing figs, then it may get on people's radars one of these days (along with other plants which I know are farmed in a similar fashion), but at least for the moment, we have bigger tofu to fry.
I consider myself a vegan, but I guess I'd be rejected by the orthodox vegans because I really don't care if I consume honey and wonder why there's any fuss about it. I also consume oysters and sardines occasionally just to ensure I'm not running short on some nutrient that I'm not aware of - yes, I know I transgress especially in regards to the sardines (some vegans make exceptions for lifeforms that don't have a face like oysters) but it's only every couple of weeks or so. So the potential for wasps in my figs is just something that seems silly to worry about.
The only reason I mention it is that - maybe in an effort to make these articles more enticing - they seem to all bring up the fact that you may be eating some amount of wasp when eating figs. I agree with you in that I don't think anyone I know who is vegan would care at all about this; not to mention the fact that many figs we eat don't need to be/aren't pollinated by wasps at all.
Sadly, "plant food" has huge consequence to animals, and the mechanical destruction of insects is the least of it. Fields and plantations and orchards are chemical holocausts, pesticides and herbicides and fungicides wipe out most living things, some of them bioaccumulate and start attacking other parts of the food chain, others leech into ground water or rivers or oceans and quite often have horrible effects on aquatic life from amphibians to coral reefs. In some places and for some crops, larger pests might be culled (mice, rabbits, wild pigs, birds, fruit bats, deer, kangaroo, you name it). In food storage and processing is the same pest and fungacides with generally more emphasis on rodenticide chemicals which can also bioaccumulate and poison birds of prey, owls, snakes, etc. Then habitat destruction.
A person basically can't live in the modern world without destroying animals.
Although I do admire vegans who do it to try to make a difference there.
I spent most of my life having now idea how delicious fresh figs are. To me they were a fried fruit like raisins, dates or prunes, that aren’t bad but aren’t amazing either. On a road trip through NorCal I picked some up at a fruit stand and they were amazing. I wish I had access to fresh figs all the time now.
The last word on figs must be the amazing documentary The Queen of Trees (2005), about a single fig tree in Africa, and the animals that live in, on and around it. Includes incredible footage of wasps inside the figs, and the worms eating them...It gets kind of horrifying at times. Maybe one of the greatest nature documentaries ever made. Enjoy!
Oh man, my whole family is nuts on figs. My grandfather, my parents, and I each have a fig tree in our respective backyards. Every year we compare, but you can't beat my grandfather... His figs are the biggest I've ever seen! And no special tools/chemicals, just old-school gardening.
I think the tree I have is a ficus carica. I could be wrong. Lovely purple figs.
The way I eat them is by pulling them apart first. In my whole life I've never seen a wasp inside. So if one did get stuck in there, clearly the fig is just absorbing it out of existence anyway.
This is one of those articles where the author claims to have experience in the area and then states something so wrong you have to wonder what else they're incorrect about.
"...although the word “fruit” is deceptive because figs are anatomically not really fruits but a cluster of hundreds of flowers enclosed in a smooth skin."
Figs are a fruit. It's basically the definition of a fruit. If you want to say figs aren't fruits because they're made up of multiple flowers, then what are mulberries? Pineapples? Breadfruit?
A true fruit is only from the ovary[0] so it doesn't meat the strict definition as it includes the entire flower(s). As I understand there is debate about this but my dad is a botanist and I've heard him call figs "false fruits". You may disagree on that point but I don't think it's sufficient to discredit the author.
I suppose if you want to narrowly define it in that way. But again, if figs are not fruits, then neither are the closely related mulberries. Pineapple is also not a fruit when defined like that.
I've definitely heard it as a tongue-in-cheek thing the way arborists complain about palm trees and call them "glorified grasses". That actually makes more sense to me though, as they're monocots.
-They're not fruit.
-What are they?
-They're a multiple fruit.
I'm not sure when it would be helpful to only consider fruits as coming from the ovary. There's other words for that and I don't understand why some like to define fruit in that way. Is there maybe a historical reason for it?
Edit: Wrote that they were aggregate fruits for some reason. Changed it to multiple fruits.
Right, my dad would say none of those are "true fruits" I'm pretty sure. Also, some botanists say apples aren't technically fruits because they come from a different part of the flower.
Also, did I really misspell "meet" as "meat" in my other comment? Ugh.
I think I didn't do a great job of explaining what bothered me about the author's statement. There's botanical definitions and by some of those, a fig is not a fruit. What they wrote is that it's deceptive to call a fig a fruit when there's basically no situations outside of academia and propagation where that distinction matters.
I never did like figs at all. It's the bland, peppery taste that closes up the throat.
It was many years later when I discussed this with a friend who was telling me how wonderful his fresh figs were, and found that there was no peppery itching in his experience of figs. And came to the conclusion that I most likely have a mild fig allergy. It doesn't make them dangerous to me, just unpleasant; unless maybe I ate 100 figs, and there's no chance of that.
I still don't like them. De gustibus non disputandum est.
That sounds like an allergic reaction. Anaphylaxis ranges in severity from minor discomfort to life threatening. The reaction depends on the sensitivity of the person, the triggering substance, and the amount of the substance they came in contact with
I agree, but it's an odd thing to realise much later, when reluctantly trying a food for maybe the first time in 10 or 20 years. (when a kid says they don't like figs, figs are stinky, you stop giving them figs and move on.)
Friend was one of those enthusiastic "go on, they're so fresh, try it you'll like it!" guys.
So I said: "all right then. Nope, still tastes like figs do"
Q: "What do you mean?"
A: "you know, all peppery and rough. Figs."
Q: "uh, what?"
A: "Figs are peppery, itchy, right? Right?"
"Nnnoo. It might be just you."
I don't have a serious reaction. I still don't like figs though.
FWIW, I've never before heard of anyone allergic to figs - or to any fruit. So I suspect that it is a rare dysfunction. The unusual nature and the mild reaction make your situation non-obvious. The link to wasps (noted by others) adds an additional potential dimension.
I know one person that is allergic to chocolate, as well as to "Christmas trees" (don't know whether it's all pines or only some pines). Other than that, all the food allergy cases I know of fall into the common categories - dairy, poultry, shellfish, nuts/legumes...
Now that I think about it, I have to wonder if the "soapy" cilantro phenomenon is a mild allergy. But that's also correlated to the "supertaster" phenomenon.
When I visited Honolulu as a child I was impressed by the International Market, an outdoor market that was sheltered and embraced by the roots of a giant banyan tree. On a more recent visit I was disappointed to discover that the market had been fully renovated.
Unsafe for vegans but so delicious. Figs here in Oz have been a revelation to me, brought up on dried figs, fresh ones on tap...
I happen to like them all ways, especially grilled, finished either with or without sugar by a blowtorch, or with goats curd and prosciutto, or simply torn through salad or on my brekkie cereal.
(After reading the article, I guess because of the wasps. But I thought the idea of veganism was to not harm any sentient creature, not to avoid consuming the biomass of any once-sentient creature. Otherwise, surely all plant life on earth, as one way or another fertilised by once-sentient biomass, would be off-limits!)
Whether that is the case or not, we are talking about the remnants of a sentient being that went through a stage of its biological life willingly. Besides being more an insect than an animal, it's not like this is similar to asking a vegetarian to eat roadkill or an animal that died of natural causes, which wouldn't be healthy or conventional anyway.
If some are taking it this far, would they be opposed to eating apples from a tree that was fertilized by the remnants of a decomposed animal?
This is weird for me. You're not going to believe this but a long time ago I worked in a BMW factory making the rear pillar for the 3-series. It was made of about 4 pieces which were already cut and shaped. I clipped these pieces into a machine which would then spot-weld them together. I would take out the finished piece and load it onto a rack (this is probably all automated now). My qouta was about 480 pieces per shift which kept me really busy. I didn't even know that this shape was called a Hofmeister kink.
Figs have an incredibly rich history and present - they were apparently one of the first plants cultivated by humans and they have followed peoples' migration across the planet (largely through the magic that is vegetative propagation). I've found the communities that exist to collect, share, and preserve different varieties (there are hundreds, at least) and their stories quite friendly and welcoming. [0][1]
They are also a surprisingly delicious fruit when fresh and ripe but, unlike many other fruits or vegetables, fresh ripe figs are almost always acquired somewhere locally - a tree in a backyard, a local farmer's market, a friend who grew more than they know what to do with. They are very soft when ripe and mostly spoil too quickly to survive modern shipping.
This past summer, a number of fig-related threads in my life came together and I became very interested in figs. I found a number of trees in my neighborhood in Brooklyn which I'm documenting. I've been collecting[2] and propagating cuttings to grow and give to friends, and I'm learning how to grow and care for them in colder climates.
If you haven't tried fresh figs from someplace other than a grocery store or restaurant, I highly suggest looking for them at your local farmer's market some time between late July and early October (in the Northern hemisphere), or get your hands on a tree and try growing some yourself :).
[0] https://www.ourfigs.com/
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Figs/
[2] https://www.figbid.com/